Cambridge, We Have A Problem

Before I get into this, let me reiterate something that most white pundits on Tee Vee seem to be missing and I don't know that the black pundits are doing a good job of pointing out.

Stupid does not equal racist.

That should be an obvious observation but it really has been when you are talking about coverage of President Obama's answer to a question about his opinion on the arrest of Harvard Professor Skip Gates. He said...

that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home

But if you are watching cable news its obvious that they are conflating him saying "stupidly" with the specter of racial profiling. But he specifically said...

Now, I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that.

I wish we had a better class of pundits of course, but we don't so you can expect them to keep confusing the issue.

Now on to the reason for this post. The Smoking Gun has now posted the arrest report of Skip Gates. There is an inconsistency between the narrative written by the arresting officer Sgt James Crowley and the supporting Officer Carlos Figueroa which immediately popped out to me.


Read Crowley's narrative about where he was at when Professor Gates supposedly said "No I will not" in response to his request for identification and note if anyone else is there.

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Now read what Officer Figueroa has to say about the "No I will not" quote and when and where he says it happened.

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So Sgt Crowley contends that he was outside of Professor Gate's residence alone and the door was closed when Gates said "No I will not" in response to a request for identification. Officer Figueroa on the other hand contends that he was there when Professor Gates made the statement and Sgt Crowley was inside the house.

Now does this discrepancy mean that Professor Gates' version of events is 100% true and the officers' accounts are 100% false? No, I am not saying that. But if they can't even get a basic fact right it would seem to be something that was made up, no? At the least it smells of collusion on the story. And if Figueroa is lying about hearing the "No I will not" quote is it hard to believe that he is probably lying about hearing the "You don't know who you are messing with" quote as well?

There is one other thing I have to point out also. By Sgt Crowley's own admission HE was the one who asked Skip Gates to follow him out of the house. Supposedly because of an acoustic problem. But now he is trying to sell everyone on the notion that he arrested Skip Gates because he kept following him after the door berating him. He simply can not have it both ways. If you asked the man to come out of his house then you can't arrest him because he did what you asked him to, no matter how irritated you are by what he might have said to you.

So tell me again what wasn't stupid about arresting an elderly man with a disability in his own home???